The men's club volleyball team played in its first interdivisional tournament this past Saturday at Yale University in New Haven, CT and despite arriving only five minutes before the competition started, the team still managed to make it to the final match before losing to Yale.
"The final match wasn't pretty," senior captain Adam Goldfarb said. "We just were not playing with the intensity we needed."
The team beat the Yale Bulldogs in the first match of the tournament but could not pull off a second win in the finals.
"Yale is a good team. They are probably in the top ten in the league," Goldfarb said. "We should've beaten them again but we just couldn't come together."
The defeat came after a fairly easy win in the semi-final match against Dartmouth. The Jumbos beat the Big Green in two consecutive games, 25-15 and 25-12.
"We really hurt them, and the whole team had fun," Goldfarb said. "They talked some smack, but we just kept coming."
Before the playoff matches, Tufts went 3-0, claiming the top spot in its pool. Without warming up adequately after a two-and-a-half hour drive, the team was still able to defeat Yale - taking the first and third games of the match. The Jumbos next breezed by Albany and Gordon College, enabling them to advance to the next round of play.
Gordon and Albany were "not very good teams," Goldfarb said. "We pounded on both of them."
This solid tournament performance came after an important rematch against MIT, here at Tufts last Thursday, when Tufts lost the best of five matches, three games to one. The first two games were close with Tufts losing 25-21 and 25-22. In the third game, the Jumbos beat the MIT squad pretty handily, 25-15. In the fourth game after being up 24-21, the Jumbos lost five straight points and the game 26-24.
"It was a tough match, and I still feel we could've beaten them," Goldfarb said. "We lacked intensity when it was needed. It was definitely not a question of talent."
For now the team has its sights on a big game against Boston College, which will be held here at Tufts next Tuesday at the Chase gym. The BC game will be Tufts' last home game of the year.
